


P.E.T.

by zombified_queer



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Character Death, Fantastic Racism, Internalized Speciesism, Loss of Limbs, Medical Experimentation, Non-Consensual Body Modification, One-Sided Attraction, Other, POV Second Person, Prosthetic Limbs, Sentient pets, Stockholm Syndrome, renaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 14:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17205287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombified_queer/pseuds/zombified_queer
Summary: [Originally posted on Tumblr as "P.E.T. Unit."]You've convinced yourself that, despite everything he's done, you do love Crell Moset.





	P.E.T.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cyrelia_J](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyrelia_J/gifts).



He liked you. He was fond of you. You could be sure of it. You were the only one he pets (though, with gloves on, a safety measure for both of you) and he smiles at you (or you think he did, the mask made it hard to tell) and you were the only one he kept (technically the only one to survive, but that made you better than all the others).

“I brought you tea.”

“Thank you.” He tilts his head toward you, acknowledging as you set the mug within his grasp but not close enough for him to knock it over by accident or contaminate his tea with the sample. “How are your new limbs treating you?”

You gave them an experimental flex, just to show them off to him. He’d given them to you as a gift, citing that time he’s let disease-ridden voles chew your original arms off. “I like them. They’re so pretty.”

“Pretty,” he muses. He raises a brow ridge.

“Mhm. And they’re lighter than the old ones.” He’d taken the old ones to see how you’d adapt to a week without any arms, the heavy metal prosthetics melted down in the incinerator while you watched. You didn’t cry, not that time.

“You’re a curious one, 42.”

You flash him a wide grin. “You wouldn’t keep me if I wasn’t a case study.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

He goes back to his dissecting, ignoring you again. You’re not upset about it, not really. Crell’s a good man doing good work and sometimes he needs you to be very quiet while he concentrates.

You wish, sometimes, you could help him but your prosthetics aren’t able to handle the delicate cuts he can make. Instead, you watch sometimes, like you’re doing now, or you’ll bring food down to the lab, or drag off old samples to the incinerator and clean up after him.

“Something on your mind 42?”

You watch the precision of his scalpel, the tumour extracted for a slide study. “No.”

“You’re spacing out.”

“I wanna help,” you mumble, looking away as though you’ve said something embarrassing.

“There’s some samples I need disposed of,” he points out. It’s the answer he always gives you.

“Yes sir.” You try not to sound sullen. He doesn’t like sullen.

* * *

He’s sleeping soundly and you can’t help yourself. You reach out to touch him, but stop, hand resting in mid-air. You’re always afraid to touch him. The prosthetics are always strong, too strong, and you’re scared if you pet him, even gently, that he’ll shatter into a million small pieces.

“42, what are you doing?”

“Nothing.” You let your hand fall into your lap, where it belongs. “Go back to sleep, please, sir.”

He gives you a look before humming, turning over. You wait until he’s deeply asleep and raise your hand again, staring at your white-plastic digits. Your hand shakes. It’s not supposed to do that. Your fingers curl into a fist.

Gently, carefully, tenderly, you card your fingers through his hair. You assume it’s soft. You can’t really feel anything.

When you pull your hand away, there’s no bruises on him.

You breathe a sigh of relief and tuck him in.

* * *

When he first took you in, you cried constantly. You cried because it hurt. You cried because you threw up. You cried because you were lonely. You cried because you were scared. You cried because you wanted to die.

He’d made careful incisions across your calves, all the way up, with his scalpel. He ground dirt and glass and bugs into each gash, simply studying.

Crying was forbidden because he didn’t like body fluids. Ironic.

Eventually your calves got too infected so he took your legs off at the knee. He moved onto your thighs. This time, instead of earth and worms, it was diseases and bacteria. Epidemiology.

He liked you because you had such a “robust” immune system. He liked you because you didn’t react typically. Instead of breaking down under the pain, under the strain of bile corroding your throat, you simply complied, let him do what was necessary. He liked that.

When he took your legs—without anaesthetics, since it would be a waste because you were supposed to die at some point or another—you reached out, clinging to him. When he left you alone, you used your arms, not to crawl away from him, like a worm in the sun, vermin fro light, but you crawled toward him.

You crawled toward him, used your manners and your words.

_Please._

And he scratched at your scalp, like someone would a pet.

**So polite for a subject.**

_Please._

You weren’t supposed to live. You were supposed to drown in your own blood and vomit like an animal. But you were persistent for a pest. He smiled in his cynical way, tossed a rag at you.

**Get cleaned up. I’ve got a surprise for you.**

You accepted the rag (and still have it today) and dragged your limp, heavy body across the cool tiles, clutching at him, worship on your lips.

**Come, now. That’s no way to behave.**

Your new legs were supposed to be a joke between the two of you. He’d had them made out of titanium and shaped like cattle legs. To him, you were livestock and replaceable and, with the right amount of adjusting, anyone could wear those legs.

But you were the only one who did.

* * *

He’s got a stuck shed again from stress due to his work. Frustrated, he calibrated your arms only to be delicate and gentle. You miss lugging around decomposing samples without effort, but this requires more attention.

You massage the oil over his scales, taking care with Crell—Sir, you scold yourself—and ease the discomfort.

He’s nude, but clothes catch on his skin and scales and it becomes painful for him. It doesn’t arouse you in the slightest except, perhaps, to want to lay your head in his lap and be his pet again like those early days.

“You’re awfully quiet, 42.”

“Thinking,” you answer.

“What about?”

“How much your work needs you.”

He hums. Your hands move over his broad shoulders, easing the old skin from new. He falls asleep under your hands, his breaths slow and even.

“Sleep well sir,” you say, almost unconsciously as your hands move down his back.

* * *

Every time you drag another sample down to the incinerator, you get so dirty. Your hands are always stained with red, with brown and black, with green. You don’t understand why he made your hands out of plastic. You have to wash them thirty times before you’re satisfied that you’re clean.

And you always end up burning your aprons with the samples. Those get too stained to be saved.

Sometimes, you think he appreciates the way you’re so thorough in sterilizing yourself.

Sometimes, you’re still a sample to him.

* * *

Sometimes you open the incinerator door and watch the flames. They’re nice, warm.

You have to clean it out at least once a week. Now, with him working so diligently on another cure (and something to be branded as a cosmetic, which he’s trying out on you), you have to clean it out every two days. Lots of samples get disposed of. Lots of aprons turn to ash.

You load the samples in, swallowing back your revulsion at being dirty again, and shut the door, adjust the controls until the whole room feels warm and it smells like burning meat.

You wonder if he’d like a roast for dinner since you’ve been waiting for a special occasion.

* * *

“No, I’m sorry,” you say to the two men at the door. “He’s out right now.”

A lie. He’s in the basement. But these men put you on edge. Something about the ridges on their noses instills fear in you.

“When can we expect him back?” one asks.

“It’s important,” clarifies the other.

“I don’t know. Sometimes his errands take weeks,” you answer. That’s not an entire lie.

“Weeks,” ponders the one.

“Weeks,” repeats the other.

“Can you tell him we’d like an appointment with Doctor Moset?” they ask in unison.

“I’ll let him know you stopped by.” The words are mechanical out of your mouth and taste like metal. You close the door manually, locking it.

In the reflection of the metal door, you watch blood pour over your lip. You bit the inside of your cheek.

“Who was that?” he asks you.

“No one at all,” you assure him, smiling.

“42,” he sighs and your heart freezes in your chest, “you’ve injured yourself.”

“Have I?” You keep smiling until you think your face is going to shatter. “I didn’t notice.”

* * *

You stole a scalpel like you weren’t supposed to.

You began baiting voles with some stolen samples. Cages were easy to make. You kept them outside, in the backyard where he never went, with water and just enough food to keep them alive in their tiny prisons. You noted the symptoms, wrote it in a physical journal, and nodded sagely at their festering little bodies. They couldn’t bite your hands or your legs and you could hold them down so easily.

The first one, you held too tight and cut it open only to find the ribs had broken into splinters, piercing the heart and lungs of your tiny subject. It didn’t even have time to squeal in fright.

The second one was better. You broke its ribs but didn’t kill it. When you cut it open (clumsily because you didn’t have the training he had), you simply plucked those broken ribs out, tossed them aside, and pulled it’s organs out with curiosity.

Your hands were stained up to the elbows and you vomited into the shrubs.

But you got better, cleaner with your careful cuts, gentler in the way you held them down. You learned to identify all it’s internal parts, the different portions of the voles’ tiny brains. So unsophisticated. So primal. So basic.

You never burned the bodies the way Crell did with his samples. Sometimes you fed them to each other, just to see what would happen. Sometimes you buried them. Sometimes you simply held the mangled bodies in your hands and threw them as far as you could, watching them sail with their innards streaming red and purple in the sun.

You were glad he had no neighbours to tattle on you.

* * *

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, not looking up from the slides he was studying.

“Yes, Sir?”

“I want you to carry on my work.”

“Sir?”

“42, just listen,” he said gently.

You shut up and nodded, not sure if he’d see the gesture.

“I’m not going to live forever,” he admitted. “And I’d prefer if someone could do something with my research, take it to Prime or continue the lab here.”

Your chest constricts almost painfully at the thought of him dying. You can’t imagine a life without him. The tears spill over before you can stop them.

“You’re a good enough candidate to continue my work here, 42.”

You hug him from behind, face pressing into his back as if you can merge into one person, give him your life instead.

“I’ve got contacts who can provide you with everything you need,” he continues, almost idly now. “You’ll need training to use some of the equipment, but—”

“I stole a scalpel from you.”

“Really?” He sounds amused. “What did you use it on?”

“Voles.”

“Then that’s one less thing I need to train you with.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, 42?”

“I don’t want you to leave. Ever.”

“It won’t be right away, 42,” he says, almost comforting. “But you’re a third my age and I won’t live for—”

“You can’t,” you insist and you have to stop hugging him or you’ll break him. “Please, I don’t want to be alone.”

“You could always make one like yourself,” he points out. “No one but another of you could handle all this, I think.”

“Sir?”

“It’ll be alright, 42. You’ll have so much fun learning you won’t have time to be sad.”

* * *

Eventually, you do forget. You spent months learning the more precise ways to make cuts for the slides. You learned how to operate the old-fashioned microscope.

Each new accomplishment gains you approval. He’ll smile over your shoulder when he no longer has to guide your hand or remind you to bring the lenses into focus.

He starts acquiring parts—prosthetic parts—and sets them up in the lab. But you’re uncertain about making something like you. You’re worried the one you make won’t like you, will hate you, will look at you and start screaming.

Screaming makes your head hurt.

So you turn to sabotage, burning those limbs in the furnace like he used to do with yours. Crell seems amused by this little game and starts hiding the limbs.

You don’t want another like you around. You don’t want to lose him. You don’t want any of this.

* * *

You see those men with the ridges on their noses again. They watch the house like predators, never straying from their posts, waiting for a weakness.

“42?”

“Sir.”

“Handle them, will you?”

“Of course.”

You step out of the house.

Bones breaking under your hands sends vibrations up the sturdy plastic that feels good. You continue until they’re pulp and you keep going.

You return to the house without a word and go sanitize yourself.

* * *

The one he selects for you isn’t unattractive. But you don’t want it.

“What do I do with it?” you ask, nudging the specimen with your foot.

“Oh, anything,” he tells you. “Hurt it. Mangle it. Dissect it.”

“I’m really ready for one of my own?”

He rests a hand on your shoulder, where plastic meets skin. “But of course. Now make of i what I’ve made of you.”

You consider the creature in front of you. It’s got nose ridges. Those make you want to vomit and before you can blink you’ve hacked off the ridged-skin leaving a bloody swath of smoothness.

He raises a brow ridge but says nothing.

This project is entirely your own.

* * *

You make them hurt. You break their bones until they vomit from the pain, crying for you to stop hurting them. But they never beg for death. If they begged for death, you rationalize, then you wouldn’t be disobeying him by killing this worm.

“Why are you doing this?”

You blink. You don’t say a word.

“You’re like me.”

“I’m not,” you say.

“You’re the same as me, why are you doing this?”

“We’re not the same.” Just to prove a point, you twist their left arm off.

They can’t even manage to scream. You drop the arm with a wet thump in front of them. There’s so much blood and you want them to just stop crying and bleeding just stop it.

You, reluctantly, stitch the skin together. You press at the stitches to make them squirm.

“Just say you want to die,” you hiss.

“No,” they say softly. “I’d rather suffer and live.”

“I’ll make you hurt so bad you’ll wish you were dead.”

They laugh, loud and bitter. You kick them in their broken ribs before letting them curl up to rest.

* * *

You burn their arm with a sort of delight. Slowly, piece by piece, you’ll break them apart. You’ll break them inside and out, until they’re a hollow, empty shell begging for death.

You leave the meat burning and go hose yourself off.

* * *

The voles are all dead.

You hadn’t had time to tend to them with your new project. They ate the ones who died first, tearing into their bellies with their teeth. They drank each other’s blood until there was nothing left but husks. And then there were a few, fighting for space, fighting to be the last left alive in the hopes you would feed them, water them.

You cradle one, the last one, in your hands. It rustles as you touch it, withered like a dead plant, mummified in the sun.

You can’t feel it’s scant fur against your hands.

* * *

You show your project some affection. Variability will make them mistrust everything. This you know.

You pet their head, like an animal, and they lean into your touch. Their hair looks soft, but you can’t feel it. You stop petting them to check their stitches. It’s healing nicely considering the cruelty you’ve shown them.

“I’ll be giving you a new arm soon.”

“How kind.” They’re mocking you.

You consider tearing out their vocal chords right now. You could do it and keep them alive. But it’s not time. Not yet.

“I didn’t want you. He did.”

“He brought me here for you,” they say. “That’s love, I think.”

You shove them, roughly, and hear a soft snapping. Not bothering with your project, you set a spool of thread and needle down for them to use.

* * *

“42?”

“Yes?”

His head is in your lap. He trusts you to be gentle as you card your fingers through his hair, brushing it out of his face.

“Be kind to them. You need a friend.”

“I have you.”

He shakes his head. “Stubborn.”

“I learned it from you.”

* * *

The prosthetics are clunky. You love attaching them to your project, ruining their beauty. They function, though. You’ve done the arms first but left your project legless, enjoying watching them crawl.

You want them to beg.

They never do.

So you leave them crawling like an insect and relish in their misery hidden behind cheerful greetings and wide smiles.

* * *

Kneeling in the burnt remains of the house, you clutch Crell close. He won’t live. He’s burnt so terribly that every action seems to bring him pain. His skin breaks under your touch, oozing along the cracks. It rustles and you’re reminded, for a sharp moment, of the voles in the garden.

“42.” Even saying your name brings him pain.

“I’m here.”

He gropes blindly for you, cupping your face. “You’ve made me proud.”

“You’ll be okay, I just have to—”

“No, 42.” Even breathing brings him pain, but he gasps for air. “Carry on my … my research.”

His hand drops from your face, the burnt skin cracking as the back of his hand hits the floor hard.

You curl into yourself, into him, as if trying to curls into yourself hard enough to implode and take just the two of you. You cry, shaking in a way that should shake you apart.

But you hold together.

Unfortunately, you hold together and need to continue.

You pick him up and take him to the garden. He, at least, deserves a burial and a proper marker for his shallow grave.

* * *

P.E.T., you’ve decided on for your project. Pathetic. Empty. Trash.

You’ve decided it’s better they don’t speak, carefully severing their vocal chords. You don’t need a friend. You only need someone to continue his work.

P.E.T. gives a few unsteady steps on their new prosthetic legs, their steps heavy on the concrete basement floor. They turn and offer you a wide smile, as if everything you’ve done has never hurt them.

You shove them over and let them figure out their legs on their own.

Crell left you cosmetics to produce and samples to look over. You’ll need to finish the work if you’re going to restore the house to its former glory.

* * *

While cleaning, P.E.T. finds something in the ashes, grinning widely as they bring it over to you. Whatever it is catches the light, nearly blinding you. You’ve half a mind to trip them and shatter whatever it is P.E.T. has found.

You decide against it.

P.E.T. smiles, eyes closed, head tilted, as they offer you the object in their hands.

It’s reflective and part of you is scared to take it. But you reach out, gingerly accepting the shard of glass.

Looking into it, you tense up. Bile rises in your throat, your mouth falling open to expel it unconsciously.

Across your nose are the ridges that make you so sick.

You shatter the glass in your fist, scoring the plastic of your palm. You grind it to dust, letting the shimmering particles slip through your fingers.

P.E.T. simply continues smiling at you before hurrying off to get back to tidying up.  
Breenling updates  
\-   
\- The hybrid should be due anytime now. 

Suggestions   
\-   
\-   
\-   
\- 

 

He liked you. He was fond of you. You could be sure of it. You were the only one he pets (though, with gloves on, a safety measure for both of you) and he smiles at you (or you think he did, the mask made it hard to tell) and you were the only one he kept (technically the only one to survive, but that made you better than all the others).

“I brought you tea.”

“Thank you.” He tilts his head toward you, acknowledging as you set the mug within his grasp but not close enough for him to knock it over by accident or contaminate his tea with the sample. “How are your new limbs treating you?”

You gave them an experimental flex, just to show them off to him. He’d given them to you as a gift, citing that time he’s let disease-ridden voles chew your original arms off. “I like them. They’re so pretty.”

“Pretty,” he muses. He raises a brow ridge.

“Mhm. And they’re lighter than the old ones.” He’d taken the old ones to see how you’d adapt to a week without any arms, the heavy metal prosthetics melted down in the incinerator while you watched. You didn’t cry, not that time.

“You’re a curious one, 42.”

You flash him a wide grin. “You wouldn’t keep me if I wasn’t a case study.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

He goes back to his dissecting, ignoring you again. You’re not upset about it, not really. Crell’s a good man doing good work and sometimes he needs you to be very quiet while he concentrates.

You wish, sometimes, you could help him but your prosthetics aren’t able to handle the delicate cuts he can make. Instead, you watch sometimes, like you’re doing now, or you’ll bring food down to the lab, or drag off old samples to the incinerator and clean up after him.

“Something on your mind 42?”

You watch the precision of his scalpel, the tumour extracted for a slide study. “No.”

“You’re spacing out.”

“I wanna help,” you mumble, looking away as though you’ve said something embarrassing.

“There’s some samples I need disposed of,” he points out. It’s the answer he always gives you.

“Yes sir.” You try not to sound sullen. He doesn’t like sullen.

* * *

He’s sleeping soundly and you can’t help yourself. You reach out to touch him, but stop, hand resting in mid-air. You’re always afraid to touch him. The prosthetics are always strong, too strong, and you’re scared if you pet him, even gently, that he’ll shatter into a million small pieces.

“42, what are you doing?”

“Nothing.” You let your hand fall into your lap, where it belongs. “Go back to sleep, please, sir.”

He gives you a look before humming, turning over. You wait until he’s deeply asleep and raise your hand again, staring at your white-plastic digits. Your hand shakes. It’s not supposed to do that. Your fingers curl into a fist.

Gently, carefully, tenderly, you card your fingers through his hair. You assume it’s soft. You can’t really feel anything.

When you pull your hand away, there’s no bruises on him.

You breathe a sigh of relief and tuck him in.

* * *

When he first took you in, you cried constantly. You cried because it hurt. You cried because you threw up. You cried because you were lonely. You cried because you were scared. You cried because you wanted to die.

He’d made careful incisions across your calves, all the way up, with his scalpel. He ground dirt and glass and bugs into each gash, simply studying.

Crying was forbidden because he didn’t like body fluids. Ironic.

Eventually your calves got too infected so he took your legs off at the knee. He moved onto your thighs. This time, instead of earth and worms, it was diseases and bacteria. Epidemiology.

He liked you because you had such a “robust” immune system. He liked you because you didn’t react typically. Instead of breaking down under the pain, under the strain of bile corroding your throat, you simply complied, let him do what was necessary. He liked that.

When he took your legs—without anaesthetics, since it would be a waste because you were supposed to die at some point or another—you reached out, clinging to him. When he left you alone, you used your arms, not to crawl away from him, like a worm in the sun, vermin fro light, but you crawled toward him.

You crawled toward him, used your manners and your words.

_Please._

And he scratched at your scalp, like someone would a pet.

**So polite for a subject.**

_Please._

You weren’t supposed to live. You were supposed to drown in your own blood and vomit like an animal. But you were persistent for a pest. He smiled in his cynical way, tossed a rag at you.

**Get cleaned up. I’ve got a surprise for you.**

You accepted the rag (and still have it today) and dragged your limp, heavy body across the cool tiles, clutching at him, worship on your lips.

**Come, now. That’s no way to behave.**

Your new legs were supposed to be a joke between the two of you. He’d had them made out of titanium and shaped like cattle legs. To him, you were livestock and replaceable and, with the right amount of adjusting, anyone could wear those legs.

But you were the only one who did.

* * *

He’s got a stuck shed again from stress due to his work. Frustrated, he calibrated your arms only to be delicate and gentle. You miss lugging around decomposing samples without effort, but this requires more attention.

You massage the oil over his scales, taking care with Crell—Sir, you scold yourself—and ease the discomfort.

He’s nude, but clothes catch on his skin and scales and it becomes painful for him. It doesn’t arouse you in the slightest except, perhaps, to want to lay your head in his lap and be his pet again like those early days.

“You’re awfully quiet, 42.”

“Thinking,” you answer.

“What about?”

“How much your work needs you.”

He hums. Your hands move over his broad shoulders, easing the old skin from new. He falls asleep under your hands, his breaths slow and even.

“Sleep well sir,” you say, almost unconsciously as your hands move down his back.

* * *

Every time you drag another sample down to the incinerator, you get so dirty. Your hands are always stained with red, with brown and black, with green. You don’t understand why he made your hands out of plastic. You have to wash them thirty times before you’re satisfied that you’re clean.

And you always end up burning your aprons with the samples. Those get too stained to be saved.

Sometimes, you think he appreciates the way you’re so thorough in sterilizing yourself.

Sometimes, you’re still a sample to him.

* * *

Sometimes you open the incinerator door and watch the flames. They’re nice, warm.

You have to clean it out at least once a week. Now, with him working so diligently on another cure (and something to be branded as a cosmetic, which he’s trying out on you), you have to clean it out every two days. Lots of samples get disposed of. Lots of aprons turn to ash.

You load the samples in, swallowing back your revulsion at being dirty again, and shut the door, adjust the controls until the whole room feels warm and it smells like burning meat.

You wonder if he’d like a roast for dinner since you’ve been waiting for a special occasion.

* * *

“No, I’m sorry,” you say to the two men at the door. “He’s out right now.”

A lie. He’s in the basement. But these men put you on edge. Something about the ridges on their noses instills fear in you.

“When can we expect him back?” one asks.

“It’s important,” clarifies the other.

“I don’t know. Sometimes his errands take weeks,” you answer. That’s not an entire lie.

“Weeks,” ponders the one.

“Weeks,” repeats the other.

“Can you tell him we’d like an appointment with Doctor Moset?” they ask in unison.

“I’ll let him know you stopped by.” The words are mechanical out of your mouth and taste like metal. You close the door manually, locking it.

In the reflection of the metal door, you watch blood pour over your lip. You bit the inside of your cheek.

“Who was that?” he asks you.

“No one at all,” you assure him, smiling.

“42,” he sighs and your heart freezes in your chest, “you’ve injured yourself.”

“Have I?” You keep smiling until you think your face is going to shatter. “I didn’t notice.”

* * *

You stole a scalpel like you weren’t supposed to.

You began baiting voles with some stolen samples. Cages were easy to make. You kept them outside, in the backyard where he never went, with water and just enough food to keep them alive in their tiny prisons. You noted the symptoms, wrote it in a physical journal, and nodded sagely at their festering little bodies. They couldn’t bite your hands or your legs and you could hold them down so easily.

The first one, you held too tight and cut it open only to find the ribs had broken into splinters, piercing the heart and lungs of your tiny subject. It didn’t even have time to squeal in fright.

The second one was better. You broke its ribs but didn’t kill it. When you cut it open (clumsily because you didn’t have the training he had), you simply plucked those broken ribs out, tossed them aside, and pulled it’s organs out with curiosity.

Your hands were stained up to the elbows and you vomited into the shrubs.

But you got better, cleaner with your careful cuts, gentler in the way you held them down. You learned to identify all it’s internal parts, the different portions of the voles’ tiny brains. So unsophisticated. So primal. So basic.

You never burned the bodies the way Crell did with his samples. Sometimes you fed them to each other, just to see what would happen. Sometimes you buried them. Sometimes you simply held the mangled bodies in your hands and threw them as far as you could, watching them sail with their innards streaming red and purple in the sun.

You were glad he had no neighbours to tattle on you.

* * *

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, not looking up from the slides he was studying.

“Yes, Sir?”

“I want you to carry on my work.”

“Sir?”

“42, just listen,” he said gently.

You shut up and nodded, not sure if he’d see the gesture.

“I’m not going to live forever,” he admitted. “And I’d prefer if someone could do something with my research, take it to Prime or continue the lab here.”

Your chest constricts almost painfully at the thought of him dying. You can’t imagine a life without him. The tears spill over before you can stop them.

“You’re a good enough candidate to continue my work here, 42.”

You hug him from behind, face pressing into his back as if you can merge into one person, give him your life instead.

“I’ve got contacts who can provide you with everything you need,” he continues, almost idly now. “You’ll need training to use some of the equipment, but—”

“I stole a scalpel from you.”

“Really?” He sounds amused. “What did you use it on?”

“Voles.”

“Then that’s one less thing I need to train you with.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, 42?”

“I don’t want you to leave. Ever.”

“It won’t be right away, 42,” he says, almost comforting. “But you’re a third my age and I won’t live for—”

“You can’t,” you insist and you have to stop hugging him or you’ll break him. “Please, I don’t want to be alone.”

“You could always make one like yourself,” he points out. “No one but another of you could handle all this, I think.”

“Sir?”

“It’ll be alright, 42. You’ll have so much fun learning you won’t have time to be sad.”

* * *

Eventually, you do forget. You spent months learning the more precise ways to make cuts for the slides. You learned how to operate the old-fashioned microscope.

Each new accomplishment gains you approval. He’ll smile over your shoulder when he no longer has to guide your hand or remind you to bring the lenses into focus.

He starts acquiring parts—prosthetic parts—and sets them up in the lab. But you’re uncertain about making something like you. You’re worried the one you make won’t like you, will hate you, will look at you and start screaming.

Screaming makes your head hurt.

So you turn to sabotage, burning those limbs in the furnace like he used to do with yours. Crell seems amused by this little game and starts hiding the limbs.

You don’t want another like you around. You don’t want to lose him. You don’t want any of this.

* * *

You see those men with the ridges on their noses again. They watch the house like predators, never straying from their posts, waiting for a weakness.

“42?”

“Sir.”

“Handle them, will you?”

“Of course.”

You step out of the house.

Bones breaking under your hands sends vibrations up the sturdy plastic that feels good. You continue until they’re pulp and you keep going.

You return to the house without a word and go sanitize yourself.

* * *

The one he selects for you isn’t unattractive. But you don’t want it.

“What do I do with it?” you ask, nudging the specimen with your foot.

“Oh, anything,” he tells you. “Hurt it. Mangle it. Dissect it.”

“I’m really ready for one of my own?”

He rests a hand on your shoulder, where plastic meets skin. “But of course. Now make of i what I’ve made of you.”

You consider the creature in front of you. It’s got nose ridges. Those make you want to vomit and before you can blink you’ve hacked off the ridged-skin leaving a bloody swath of smoothness.

He raises a brow ridge but says nothing.

This project is entirely your own.

* * *

You make them hurt. You break their bones until they vomit from the pain, crying for you to stop hurting them. But they never beg for death. If they begged for death, you rationalize, then you wouldn’t be disobeying him by killing this worm.

“Why are you doing this?”

You blink. You don’t say a word.

“You’re like me.”

“I’m not,” you say.

“You’re the same as me, why are you doing this?”

“We’re not the same.” Just to prove a point, you twist their left arm off.

They can’t even manage to scream. You drop the arm with a wet thump in front of them. There’s so much blood and you want them to just stop crying and bleeding just stop it.

You, reluctantly, stitch the skin together. You press at the stitches to make them squirm.

“Just say you want to die,” you hiss.

“No,” they say softly. “I’d rather suffer and live.”

“I’ll make you hurt so bad you’ll wish you were dead.”

They laugh, loud and bitter. You kick them in their broken ribs before letting them curl up to rest.

* * *

You burn their arm with a sort of delight. Slowly, piece by piece, you’ll break them apart. You’ll break them inside and out, until they’re a hollow, empty shell begging for death.

You leave the meat burning and go hose yourself off.

* * *

The voles are all dead.

You hadn’t had time to tend to them with your new project. They ate the ones who died first, tearing into their bellies with their teeth. They drank each other’s blood until there was nothing left but husks. And then there were a few, fighting for space, fighting to be the last left alive in the hopes you would feed them, water them.

You cradle one, the last one, in your hands. It rustles as you touch it, withered like a dead plant, mummified in the sun.

You can’t feel it’s scant fur against your hands.

* * *

You show your project some affection. Variability will make them mistrust everything. This you know.

You pet their head, like an animal, and they lean into your touch. Their hair looks soft, but you can’t feel it. You stop petting them to check their stitches. It’s healing nicely considering the cruelty you’ve shown them.

“I’ll be giving you a new arm soon.”

“How kind.” They’re mocking you.

You consider tearing out their vocal chords right now. You could do it and keep them alive. But it’s not time. Not yet.

“I didn’t want you. He did.”

“He brought me here for you,” they say. “That’s love, I think.”

You shove them, roughly, and hear a soft snapping. Not bothering with your project, you set a spool of thread and needle down for them to use.

* * *

“42?”

“Yes?”

His head is in your lap. He trusts you to be gentle as you card your fingers through his hair, brushing it out of his face.

“Be kind to them. You need a friend.”

“I have you.”

He shakes his head. “Stubborn.”

“I learned it from you.”

* * *

The prosthetics are clunky. You love attaching them to your project, ruining their beauty. They function, though. You’ve done the arms first but left your project legless, enjoying watching them crawl.

You want them to beg. To cry. Scream. Plead with you to just be nice so you have an excuse to take their head in your hands and break their neck in one easy motion.

They never do. 

So you never do.

So you leave them crawling like an insect and relish in their misery hidden behind cheerful greetings and wide smiles.

* * *

Kneeling in the burnt remains of the house, you clutch Crell close. He won’t live. He’s burnt so terribly that every action seems to bring him pain. His skin breaks under your touch, oozing along the cracks. It rustles and you’re reminded, for a sharp moment, of the voles in the garden.

“42.” Even saying your name brings him pain.

“I’m here.”

He gropes blindly for you, cupping your face. “You’ve made me proud.”

“You’ll be okay, I just have to—”

“No, 42.” Even breathing brings him pain, but he gasps for air. “Carry on my … my research.”

His hand drops from your face, the burnt skin cracking as the back of his hand hits the floor hard.

You curl into yourself, into him, as if trying to curls into yourself hard enough to implode and take just the two of you. You cry, shaking in a way that should shake you apart.

But you hold together.

Unfortunately, you hold together and need to continue.

You pick him up and take him to the garden. He, at least, deserves a burial and a proper marker for his shallow grave.

* * *

P.E.T., you’ve decided on for your project: Pathetic. Empty. _Trash._

You’ve decided it’s better they don’t speak, carefully severing their vocal chords. You don’t need a friend. You only need someone to continue his work.

P.E.T. gives a few unsteady steps on their new prosthetic legs, their steps heavy on the concrete basement floor. They turn and offer you a wide smile, as if everything you’ve done has never hurt them.

You shove them over, forcing them to lay on the floor, and let them figure out their legs on their own.

Crell left you cosmetics to produce and samples to look over. You’ll need to finish the work if you’re going to get the credit needed to restore the house to its former glory.

* * *

While cleaning, P.E.T. finds something in the ashes, grinning widely as they bring it over to you. Whatever it is catches the light, nearly blinding you. You’ve half a mind to trip them and shatter whatever it is P.E.T. has found.

You decide against it.

P.E.T. smiles, eyes closed, head tilted, as they offer you the object in their hands.

It’s reflective and part of you is scared to take it. But you reach out, gingerly accepting the shard of glass.

Looking into it, you tense up. Bile rises in your throat, your mouth falling open to expel it unconsciously.

Across your nose are the ridges that make you so sick.

You shatter the glass in your fist, scoring the plastic of your palm. You grind it to dust, letting the shimmering particles slip through your fingers.

P.E.T. simply continues smiling at you—mocking you, you think—before hurrying off to get back to tidying up.


End file.
